And not nearly enough.

At his death, Secor, 89, lay face down on a floor in his two-story house set amid grand homes in a National Historic District blocks from the Fox River in this city of 23,000 just south of Green Bay.

During his life, he had been salutatorian of De Pere High School's class of 1931, a World War II veteran and the owner of two movie theaters in town.

When he died, he weighed 89 pounds, his dehydrated and malnourished body resembling an Auschwitz victim.

The home was so filled with debris, garbage and human waste that, when later inspected, it was deemed unfit for human habitation.

There were people who knew Secor as an eccentric recluse.

No one saw the truth, and no one managed to save him.

Some believed Secor was being cared for by his longtime next-door-neighbor, Dean Krause, a businessman and De Pere city councilman for 20 years.

Krause, who saw Secor regularly, found his lifeless body just after midnight on April 26, 2001. A few months earlier, Secor had given Krause power of attorney over his affairs and changed his will to make Krause his sole heir.

Secor's death sparked an investigation, which led to Krause being charged with felony negligent maltreatment of a vulnerable adult. He pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of maltreatment, receiving a $2,000 fine and 200 hours of community service.

Secor's relatives and others filed a lawsuit against Krause, and a jury earlier this year found Krause had exerted undue influence over Secor, was negligent and showed intentional disregard. Secor's estate was awarded $846,000 for pain, suffering and punitive damages. In August, a judgment was entered for the full amount, but Krause hasn't paid, asserting that he is the legal representative of the estate.

A deep tragedy

Secor's demise still haunts this community. His story illuminates many challenges in protecting the elderly — social isolation, self-neglect, the legal right to self-determination, mental health problems, and failings of the social service and justice systems.

Krause, six years after Secor's death, insisted he had been following his neighbor's wishes.

"I respected him and his thoughts and his way of living,'' Krause said. "I was not going to force him to do anything.''

Krause is "a victim" who has been unfairly vilified, said his friend and lawyer, Earl Charlton. Krause never abused Secor and only tried to help, Charlton said.

De Pere Police Detective Sgt. Dane Nelson, who investigated the death, has another view. He calls the case "the result of one person starving another person to death and profiting from it."

Krause wouldn't respond, but Charlton called the comment "outrageous."

Mary Jane Herber, a fifth-generation De Pere resident and community activist, sees a deep tragedy. "We are all responsible," she said.

Warm memories

Mary and Lila LaCourt, who've worked decades as certified nursing assistants, live a few miles from their great-uncle Delmar's home and were his closest living relatives.

Secor, they said, was an only child, intelligent and funny, and an Air Force veteran. He was also a collector of books and other items and, later in life, a loner, they said.

As a young man, he married an extroverted woman who was more than a dozen years his senior. O'Deal Secor owned De Pere's Majestic and Pearl theaters, where she sold tickets and played piano. Delmar met her at one of the theaters and eventually worked there, too.

The LaCourt sisters share warm memories of Delmar and O'Deal Secor, but cast their eyes down and softly shake their heads in sadness as they reminisce about how their great-uncle died.

At the theaters, the centerpiece of the Secors' lives, O'Deal would tell the sisters, "Go to Uncle Delmar, he'll give you anything you want,'' and he'd offer them candy, soda and popcorn.

In later years, "We saw him mostly on holidays," Mary LaCourt said. "He'd talk and talk and talk."

O'Deal was in her 90s when she died in 1988.

After O'Deal's death, Delmar wrote a will leaving most of his possessions to Mary and Lila LaCourt and their sister Janette Johnson, said attorney Matthew Boller, who represents the LaCourts in the lawsuit. The house was to go to the De Pere Women's Club, where his wife had been a longtime member.

Over time, Secor stopped visiting the sisters, but they still saw him occasionally, usually at Christmas and Easter, they said.

"He was private,'' Lila LaCourt said. "He liked to be alone.''

One day, the sisters visited their uncle and met the neighbor, Krause, who seemed friendly enough, Lila LaCourt said.

But Krause, they said, discouraged them from seeing Secor, often saying their uncle was doing fine but didn't want visitors.

The LaCourts said they last entered the house in 1998, observing clutter, but not filth or squalor. Soon after, the sisters were distracted from their great-uncle — Lila was fighting cancer and they were caring for their own ailing mother.

A new will

The LaCourts and others said Secor seemed to be fine, ambling to a nearby grocery store for food. But on Feb. 16, 2001, the grocery closed when the owner retired.

That same day, Krause invited an attorney to his residence, escorted Secor to the fence between the properties, and completed documents that gave Krause power of attorney and changed Secor's will, leaving everything to Krause, including an account with more than $50,000, the house and its contents. Secor wanted it that way, Krause said.

The sisters said they phoned Krause to voice concern about how the grocery's closing would affect Secor. The next day, they said, Krause told them he'd enrolled Secor in Brown County's Meals on Wheels. The food was delivered to Krause, who said he would take it to Secor.

At the time, the De Pere building inspector and health department were raising concerns about Secor's property, Boller said. Krause assured officials that their concerns would be addressed, and no one entered the house, Boller said.

"(Krause) had complete control of the man's life," Boller said. "He had control over his money. He knew Mr. Secor was not getting food or water from any other source. He refused to let anyone go inside that house for those eight weeks." Secor, Boller said, was starving.

Krause said Secor's living conditions weren't that bad. If they had been, the sisters or city officials could have raised concerns to county Adult Protective Services, Krause said.

Krause, Boller countered, had so isolated Secor that the sisters and city officials had no idea what was happening inside the house.

Rooms piled with garbage

The night Secor died, Krause called 911 and De Pere police responded. They found his body amid filthy, deplorable conditions — some rooms so piled with garbage they could not be entered, and a toilet full of feces, old toilet paper and newspapers, police reports and the court complaint say.

Krause, who said he had visited Secor twice earlier that day, seemed nervous and concerned that police were taking photographs, the reports say. He said he was Secor's caretaker and had power of attorney for the estate, and told them: "Now that Secor's dead, this is my house.''

Speaking to investigators, Krause said he had pondered months before about reporting Secor's poor condition to the county but had decided to let him live as he chose.

"I saw no serious problems. I saw no reason to be alarmed,'' Krause said. "I thought he was going to live forever."

Later, De Pere Building Inspector Dave Hongisto told police that, if given a chance to inspect the house, he would have condemned it as "unfit for human habitation and occupation" and had Secor moved.

Severe malnutrition

Prosecuting Krause was not simple.

Due to backlogs, it took two years to get autopsy results and bring charges, Brown County District Attorney John Zakowski said.

Some people vouched for Krause, and there was some evidence he acted in Secor's interest, such as getting Meals on Wheels, Zakowski said.

Still, under Krause's caregiving, "Mr. Secor had basically shriveled up to next to nothing,'' Zakowski said.

The autopsy, he said, revealed the most severe malnutrition and dehydration the pathologist had seen in 3,000 post-mortems.

Ultimately, Zakowski brought felony charges of negligent maltreatment of a vulnerable adult, the first time such charges had been filed in Brown County.

Krause, who said he was shocked by the allegations, made a plea deal to the misdemeanor charge.

Zakowski said the criminal case set a precedent in Brown County.

The civil courts, he said, could settle any financial issues.

But there was little left by the time the jury reached its verdict in January.

On the day Secor died, Krause moved to file the will. In 2003, before criminal or civil proceedings concluded, he auctioned Secor's possessions and netted about $7,500, spent the $52,000 from Secor's account, and deeded the house to a son, said Boller, the LaCourts' lawyer.

Krause had Secor cremated and said he is keeping the remains at his house with plans to bury the urn in a plot with Secor's mother and grandparents after legal issues are resolved. The house was sold, but the deal fell though, so it is for sale again, Krause said.

No apologies

Despite the jury verdict in January, the prospect of recovering much money is remote because Krause has few assets. The plaintiffs are trying to enforce the judgment through Brown County probate court.

Still the judgment "shows the people of Wisconsin will punish a neighbor, a corporation, a nursing home or any entity that refuses to protect our frail and elderly citizens," Boller said.

Krause said of the litigation: "It just goes on and on. It's a crime."

Six years after their great-uncle's death, the sisters ponder what happened behind the white pillars and clapboard, their frustration deepening because they say Krause hasn't apologized or accepted responsibility.

"I don't understand. He failed Delmar and gets to keep everything," Lila LaCourt said. "He has no compassion for anything."

Krause makes no apologies.

"(Delmar) had his own world. The four walls were his world," he said. "I would not invade that."